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John Adams as a Schoolmaster 



By ELIZABETH PORTER GOULD ^' 

II 



Beprinted from "Education," April, 18S9 








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JOHN ADAMS AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 

BY ELIZABETH PORTEK GOULD. 

IN the summer of 1755, John Adams, when not quite twenty- 
years of age, became the teacher of the grammar school in 
Worcester, Mass., then a town of 1,500 inhabitants. 

According to an ordinance of the General Court, in 1647, that 
a town of fifty householders should have a school, Worcester, four 
years after its incorporation in 1722, had hired its first schoolmas- 
ter. Five years later, "whereas, many small children cannot 
attend y e Schoole in y e Centre of y e Town by Reason of y e remote- 
ness of their Dwellings, and to y intent that all children may 
have y e benefite of Education," the town voted a suitable num- 
ber of " Schoole Dames " or " Gentlewomen," to be placed in y e 
Several parts of y e Town as y e Selectmen may think most con- 
venient." Upon the town's increase to one hundred families or 
"householders, a grammar school, according to law, became a neces- 
sity. Rev. Thaddeus Maccarty, the clergyman of the town, being 
■empowered by the selectmen to provide a schoolmaster, went to 
Harvard College to obtain one. At the Commencement exercises 
■of the class of that year, 1755, he was especially impressed with 
one of the graduates, John Adams. The good scholarship, bold 
thought, strong language, and evident sincerity of the young man 
seemed to him good recommendation for the teaching career. He 
learned his standing in social life by the fact that he was number 
fourteen in a class of twenty-four ; for pupils were then placed in 



the order of the supposed rank or dignity of parents. The alpha- 
betical order in their names and places was not in use until nearly 
twenty years later. 

Before the return home of the minister, John Adams was 
engaged to teach the school. Three weeks later, a horse and an 
attendant were sent from Worcester to the Adams farm in Brain- 
tree, to accompany the schoolmaster to his new home. The jour- 
ney of about sixty miles was made in one day. 

Arriving in Worcester, he went to board at the town's expense, 
at Major Nathaniel Greene's, one of the three to carry into effect 
the vote of the town to maintain a grammar school. Immediately 
after the young schoolmaster was settled in his work, he began to 
write a promised account of the "situation of his mind." But the 
" natural strength of his faculties being insufficient for the task," 
he felt obliged to invoke the " muse or goddess who inspired Mil- 
ton's pen," to help him "sing things unattempted yet in prose or 
rhyme." 

The result of this in a letter dated Sept. 2, 1755, is as interest- 
ing today as when it was written ; for it reveals a poetic tendency 
of the man which later circumstances did not tend to develop. 

" When the nimble hours have tackled Apollo's coursers, and 
the gay deity mounts the eastern sky, the gloomy pedagogue 
arises, frowning and lowering like a black cloud begrimmed with 
uncommon wrath, to blast a devoted land. When the destined time 
arrives he enters upon action, and as a haughty monarch ascends 
his throne, the pedagogue mounts his awful great chair, and dis- 
penses right and justice through his whole empire. His obsequi- 
ous subjects execute the imperial mandates with cheerfulness, and 
think it their high happiness to be employed in the service of the 
emperor. Sometimes paper, sometimes his penknife, now birch, 
now arithmetic, now a ferule, then A, B, C, then scolding, then 
flattering, then thwacking, calls for the pedagogue's attention. 
At length, his spirits all exhausted, down comes pedagogue from 
his throne, and walks out in awful solemnity, through a cringing 
multitude. In the afternoon he passes through the same dreadful 
scenes, smokes his pipe, and goes to bed. Exit muse." 

Considerable uneasiness was manifest in the beginning of this 
school experience. John Adams craved a larger sphere. The 
large number of " little runtlings, just capable of lisping A, B, C, 
and troubling the master," made the school to him a " school of 



affliction." In spite of Doctor Savil telling him for his comfort, 
that by " cultivating and pruning these tender plants in the gar- 
den of Worcester," he would make some of them "plants of re- 
nown and cedars of Lebanon," he was certain that keeping it any 
length of time would make a "•base weed and ignoble shrub" of 
him. Worcester at that time was not what it was even before the 
century closed. Twenty-eight years were to elapse before the run- 
ning of the first regular stage from Boston to Worcester, eleven 
years before even the stage should pass through Worcester from 
Boston to New York. Sixty years were to pass before the first 
passenger train should run over the Boston & Worcester railroad. 
There was comparatively little knowledge of the outside world, 
since it was twenty years before the Massachusetts Spy — the first 
publication in Worcester — - was published, and seventy, before a 
daily paper was issued there. In this lonely life among strangers, 
the new school teacher turned to the friends who had cheered his 
college da}*s, particularly to Charles dishing and Richard Cranch. 
Absence from them pained his heart while his philosophical mind 
cried, " But thus it is, and I must submit." At one time he longed 
for a letter from Richard Cranch to " balance the inquietude of 
school-keeping." He requested him to tell his friend Quincy that 
a letter from him written with that " elegance of style and delicacy 
of humor which characterized all his performances, would help 
make him a happy being once more." All correspondence was 
effected with difficulties, since it was twenty years before the 
establishment of a post-office in Worcester. 

But, after all, this new life, instead of suppressing, stimulated 
his native energies. This is seen in the prophetic thought of a 
letter, written after he had been in Worcester about six weeks, to 
his friend and kinsman, Nathan Webb, beginning thus : " All 
that part of creation which lies within our observation is liable to 
change. Even mighty states and kingddms are not exempted." 
It is evident he was moved by the existing state of affairs. This 
was the year of the expulsion of the French from Nova Scotia, 
Braddock's defeat, and the abortive expedition under Sir William 
Johnson against Crown Point. Regimental headquarters were at 
Worcester, causing tents to whiten the surrounding country. 
" Be not surprised," he wrote, " that I am turned politician. This 
whole town is immersed in politics. The interests of nations, and 
all the dira of war, make the subject of every conversation. I sit 



6 

and hear, and after having been led through a maze of sage observa- 
tions, I sometimes retire, and by laying things together, form some 
reflections pleasing to myself." In this letter lie showed a clear 
perception of the nature of friendship, which he calls " one of the 
distinguishing glories of man," when he declared, " In this, per- 
haps, we bear a nearer resemblance to unembodied intelligence 
than in anything else." His capacity for friendship was somewhat 
satisfied in the Worcester people whom he soon found to be 
"sociable, generous, and hospitable." He often dined, drank tea, 
or spent an evening with Major Chandler, Major Gardiner, Mr. 
Welman, and others. One evening he was discussing with Major 
Greene about the "Divinity and satisfaction of Jesus Christ "; 
another, he was wondering with Major Gardiner whether it was 
not the design of Christianity to make " good men, good magis- 
trates, good subjects, good children, good masters, and good ser- 
vants " rather than " good riddle-mongers, or good mystery-mon- 
gers." Another time he was making observations with his friends 
concerning the "prodigious genius cultivated with prodigious 
industry " of Mr. Franklin, who was coming back from Europe 
with a reputation enlarged on account of electrical experiments. 
He often supped and talked over matters with his first Worcester 
friend, Rev. Mr. Maccarty, whose church — the only one in town 
— he attended. It was not until after the death of Mr. Maccarty, 
in 1784, that another church — the Unitarian — was founded. 
Although Mr. Maccarty's successful ministry of thirty-seven years 
in Worcester was effective and appreciated by the people, yet 
human nature was such that while he was there, a warrant for a 
town meeting announced, " For y e Town to Come into Some 
method that People may Sit in y e Seats (in the meeting-house) 
assigned to prevent Disorders, and that they don't put themselves 
too forward." Some of the schoolmaster's observations at these 
friendly gatherings must have been scattered among the people, 
for in a letter written to his friend Gushing in April, 1756, he 
said, " There is a story about town that I am an Arminian." This, 
however, did not trouble him, for he then, as later, believed in a 
free discussion of all subjects. Meanwhile he succeeded in his 
school-work, and became by spring-time quite " contented in the 
place of a schoolmaster." In the diary, which he began while in 
Worcester (Nov. 18, 1755), he gives such a pleasant picture of his 
school at this time that I reproduce it here. He invokes no muse, 



however, but trusts to the natural strength of his faculties, which, 
it will be remembered, he dared not do before. " I sometimes in 
my sprightly moments consider myself, in my great chair at school, 
as some dictator at the head of a commonwealth. In this little 
state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising ac- 
tions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. I have sev- 
eral renowned generals but three feet high, and several deep, 
projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and 
dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles, cockle shells, 
etc., with as ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the Royal Society. 
Some rattle and thunder out A, B, C, with as much fire and im- 
petuosity as Alexander fought, and very often sit down and cry 
as heartily upon being outspelt, as Csesar did, when at Alexander's 
sepulchre, he recollected that the Macedonian hero had conquered 
the world before his age. At one table sits Mr. Insipid, foppling 
and fluttering, spinning his whirligig or playing with his ringers 
as gaily and wittily as any Frenchified coxcomb brandishes his 
cane or rattles his snuff-box. At another sits the polemical 
divine, plodding and wrangling in his mind about ' Adam's fall in 
which we sinned all,' as his Primer has it. In short, my little 
school, like the great world, is made up of prigs, politicians, 
divines, L. D.'s, fops, buffoons, fiddlers, sycophants, fools, cox- 
combs, chimney-sweepers, and every other character drawn in his- 
tory or seen in the world." He revealed the secret of his success 
as a teacher when he asked if it is not the " highest pleasure to 
preside in this little world, to bestow the proper applause upon 
virtuous and generous actions, to blame and punish every vicious 
and contracted trick, to wear out of the tender mind every thing 
that is mean or little, and fire the new-born soul with a noble ardor 
and emulation. The world affords no greater pleasure." He 
found by repeated experiment and observation in his school, that 
human nature was more easily wrought upon and governed by 
" promises, encouragement and praise, than by punishment, threat- 
ening and blame." He was, however, cautious and sparing of 
praise, " lest it become too familiar and cheap and so contempti- 
ble." He observed that " corporal as well as disgraceful punish- 
ments " depressed the spirits, while " commendation enlivened and 
stimulated them to a noble ardor and emulation." 

Outside of school hours, when not with his friends, he was 
absorbed in reading and study. When he first went to Worcester 



8 

his mind was inclined to the ministerial profession. To this end 
he copied large extracts from the works of Tillotson and others. 
One morning he rose at half-past four and wrote " Bolinbroke's Let- 
ter " on retirement and duty ; another time he wrote his " Reflec- 
tions on Exile." A volume still remains in a very minute hand 
filled with passages from the works of various authors. He was 
greatly impressed with Milton, and charmed with Addison. His 
mind dwelt much upon " religious themes and miracles." His 
aspiration of soul indicates an unusual moral attainment for so 
young a man. " Oh," he cries, in a moment of self-examination, 
" that I could wear out of my mind every mean and base affection ; 
conquer my natural pride and self-conceit ; expect no more defer- 
ence from my fellows than I deserve ; acquire that meekness and 
humility which are the sure mark and character of a great and 
generous soul ; subdue every unworthy passion, and treat all men 
as I wish to be treated by all. How happy should I then be in the 
favor and good will of all honest men and the sure prospect of a 
happy immortality ! " He possessed what he esteemed the essen- 
tial marks of a good mind, " honesty, sincerity and openness." 
While at Major Greene's, he came across " Morgan's Moral Phi- 
losopher," which he found was being circulated with some freedom 
in the town. 

After being at Major Greene's three months, he went to board 
at Dr. Nahum Willard's, whose reputation and skill as a physician 
impressed him much. In his library he % found Doctor Cheyne's 
works, Sydenham and others, and Van Swieten's Commentaries 
on Boerhaave. His general reading while there, suggested the 
thought of being a physician and surgeon. But on attending the 
courts of justice and hearing Worthington, Hawley, Trowbridge, 
Putnam, and others, he was drawn more strongly to the study of 
law. This desire grew more and more upon him, especially as he 
could not conquer his serious objections to the profession of the 
ministry. He finally went to talk the matter over with Mr. Put- 
nam, an able lawyer with good practice. The result was a con- 
tract to study law with him for two years. He agreed to the 
proposal to board with Mr. and Mrs. Putnam at the rate the town 
allowed for his lodgings. He also agreed to pay Mr. Putnam one 
hundred dollars when he should find it convenient. This plan 
involved keeping the school two years longer to pay expenses ; for 
he had taken up teaching in the first place, not so much from 



9 

choice, as from a desire to lighten the pecuniary burden his edu- 
cation had laid upon his father. "It will be hard work," he wrote 
his friend Cranch, within a week after the contract, " but the more 
difficult and dangerous the enterprise a brighter crown of laurel 
is bestowed on the conqueror." His decision to take up the legal 
profession was not approved by either of his friends Cranch or 
Cushing. The former even advised him to reconsider his resolu- 
tion and take up the ministry. His father's general expectation 
was for him to be a divine. His mother, although a religious 
woman, had no special desire for him in that direction. His 
uncles and relatives were bitterly prejudiced against the law, as 
was public sentiment at that time. But John Adams had made 
up his mind. He went at once to work in Mr. Putnam's office 
with the firm resolution " never to commit any meanness or injus- 
tice in the practise of law," and to endeavor to "oblige and please 
everybody, but Mr. and Mrs. Putnam in particular." In his diary 
for Aug. 22, 1756, he said of this important move in his life, 
" Necessity drove me to this determination, but my inclination, I 
think, was to preach. However, that would not do. The study 
and practise of law, I am sure, does not dissolve the obligations of 
morality or of religion. And although the reason of my quitting 
divinity was my opinion concerning some disputed points, I hope 
I shall not give reason of offence to any in that profession by im- 
prudent warmth." A month before writing this he had begun his 
second year in school. In order that he might not lose any time, 
and do more than the year before, he had resolved then to rise 
with the sun and to study the Scriptures on Thursday, Friday, 
Saturday and Sunday mornings, and to study some Latin author 
the other three mornings. Noons and nights he intended to read 
English authors. This resolution was crowned with a determina- 
tion to "stand collected" within himself, and to "think upon 
what he read and saw." The very day after he wrote this resolu- 
tion in his diary it so happened that it was seven o'clock when he 
arose, instead of sunrise. This for a July morning seemed to him 
inexcusable. But he grimly said, " This is the usual fate of my 
resolutions." 

During the succeeding two years, in which six hours a day were 
devoted to school-work, John Adams made good use of Mr. Put- 
nam's library, particularly the " handsome addition of law books " 
and the works of Lord Bacon, which Mr. Putnam had sent to 



10 

England for immediately after receiving into his office the new 
student. Upon his adding later Bolinbroke's works, as a result of 
reading the " Study and Use of History " and his " Patriot King," 
loaned him by the schoolmaster, an opportunit} 7- was given to read 
the posthumous works of that writer in five volumes. Mr. Burke 
once asked, who ever read Bolinbroke through? John Adams 
read him through then, and at least twice after that. But he con- 
fessed he did it without much good or harm. He considered his 
ideas of the English Constitution correct, and his political writings 
worth something, "although there was more of faction than of 
truth." He thought his style original, " resembling more the ora- 
tory of the ancients than any writings or speeches he ever read in 
English." But his religion was a "pompous folly, his abuse of 
the Christian religion as superficial as it was impious." 

Among the multitudes of law books John Adams read, while 
teaching school in Worcester, were Wood, Coke, two volumes 
Lillie's Abridgement, two volumes Salkeld's Reports, Swinburne, 
Hawkins's Pleas of the Crown, Fortescue, Fitzgibbon, ten vol- 
umes in folio, besides octavos and lesser volumes, and many of all 
sizes that he consulted occasionally without special study. 

But law was not always the subject of conversation. At break- 
fast, dinner, and tea, Mr. Putnam was commonly disputing with 
him upon some question of religion. Although he would agree to 
the extent of his learning and ingenuity to destroy or invalidate 
the evidences of a future state and the principles of natural and 
revealed religion, yet he could not convince himself that death was 
an endless sleep. This was the conclusion the keen-eyed student 
reached concerning the speculations. 

Colonel Putnam and his pupil often conversed on other subjects 
as they walked around the farm, or went shooting together. In 
all his life in Worcester the young schoolmaster found time to 
commune with Nature. He took great pleasure in " viewing and 
examining the magnificent prospects of Nature " that lay before 
him in the town. One lovely May-day he " rambled about all day 
— gaping and gazing." He enjoyed the country drives to Brain- 
tree and back which his vacation visits afforded. 

The sessions of the Superior Court at Worcester brought to 
Colonel Putnam's office interesting men whom John Adams 
delighted to meet. Here began the friendship with Jonathan 
Sewall, which was onty shadowed by the different sides they took 



11 

in the Revolution of Independence. Years after, in spite of the 
broken friendship, Jonathan Sewall said of his friend, " He has a 
heart formed for friendship, and susceptible of its finest feelings. 
He is humane, generous, and open." 

When John Adams' studies with Mr. Putnam were over, in 
1758, he was sworn as an attorney in the Superior Court in Bos- 
ton, at the recommendation of the eminent lawyer and scholar, 
Jeremy Gridley, then the attorney-general of the Province. The 
Worcester people having recognized the natural ability and schol- 
arship of their successful school teacher for three years, invited 
him to settle in their town. But desiring a change for his health, 
he accepted his father and mother's invitation to live with them at 
the old home in Braintree. Here he was living at the time of his 
marriage in 1764. But he did not forget his Worcester friends. 
In less than a year he was spending a week in Worcester, dining 
and drinking tea as of old with Colonel Chandler, Doctor Willard, 
Major Gardiner, Colonel Putnam, and others. He occasionally 
attended Superior Court there, when he would visit the office 
where he " formerly trimmed the midnight lamp." 

Thirteen years after he had lived there, while spending a day 
with Mr. Putnam, he found the " pleasure of revisiting old haunts 
very great." He saw little alteration in Doctor Willard or his 
wife. His sons were grown up. He met Colonel Chandler and 
other old friends. He went to church and saw "many faces 
altered, and many new faces." He was especially pleased to meet 
many young gentlemen who had been Latin pupils in his school. 
" John Chandler, Esq. of Petersham, Rufus Chandler the lawyer, 
Dr. William Paine, who studied physic with Doctor Holyoke of 
Salem, Nat. Chandler, who was studying law with Mr. Putnam, 
and Doctor Thaddeus Maccarty, a physician at Dudley." Would 
that this diary had also preserved some of the interesting reminis- 
cences of teacher and pupils which that day must have heard ! 
How could the interest of the now famous lawyer but center in 
the one who was studying law with Mr. Putnam in the office where 
he had spent so many profitable and happy hours. 

In 1795, forty years after he had entered Worcester as its un- 
known schoolmaster, he visited the town as Vice President of the 
United States. Though now crowned with honor and fame, the 
heart of the teacher seeking old faces and old scenes, must, for 
the moment at least, have been master. 



12 

John Adams' three years of school-teaching left a lasting im- 
pression on his mind and character. When he was an old man 
in the retirement of his Quincy home, looking back over a life 
honored even with the presidency of the nation, he said that while 
he kept school he acquired more knowledge of human nature, than 
while he was " at the bar, in the world of politics, or at the courts 
of Europe." He went so far as to advise " every young man to 
keep school," for it was the "best method of acquiring patience, 
self-command, and a knowledge of character." 

But the practical power of school work on John Adams was his 
gift to his native town of one hundred and sixty acres of land for 
the purpose of establishing there an academy. Many years, it is 
true, elapsed before a " stone school-house " could be built from 
the profits of the land. But it was at last erected on the site 
designated by the founder, over the cellar of the house in which 
Governor John Hancock was born. The following suggestion to 
the future masters of the academy was doubtless the result of his 
own experience as a teacher, when the methods of education were 
not as practicable as now. 

" But I hope the future masters will not think me too presump- 
tuous if I advise them to begin their lessons in Greek and Hebrew 
by compelling their pupils to take their pens and write, over and 
over again, copies of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets, in all their 
variety of characters. This will be as good an exercise in chi- 
rography as any they can use, and will stamp those characters and 
alphabets upon their tender minds and vigorous memories so 
deeply that the impression will never wear out." 

It will always be a pleasant thought that this school in Quincy, 
now under the care of Dr. William Everett, is a legitimate out- 
come of John Adams' successful three years' life as the grammar 
school master in Worcester. 

Though dead, he yet speaketh. 



14 



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